1.At daybreak,when loth to rise,have this thought ready in thy min d:I am rising for a man's work.Am I then still peevish that I am goin g to do that for which I was born and for the sake of which I came into the world?Or was I made for this,that I should nuzzle under the bed-cl othes and keep my- self warm?But this is pleasanter.Hast thou been mad e then for pleasure,in a word,I ask thee,to be acted upon or to act?Consider each little plant,each tiny bird,the ant,the spider,the bee,how they go about their own work and do each his part for the building up of an orderly Universe.Dost thou then refuse to do the work of a man?Dost thou not hasten to do what Nature bids thee.But some rest,too,is necessary.I do not deny it.Howbeit Nature has set limits to this,a nd no less so to eating and drinking.Yet thou exceedest these limits an d exceedest sufficiency.But in acts it is no longer so;there thou come st short of the possibility.
For thou lovest not thyself,else surely hadst thou loved thy nature also and to do her will.But others who love their own art wear themselv es to a shadow with their labours over it,forgetting to wash or take fo od.But thou holdest thine own nature in less honour than the chaser of metal his art of chasing,than the dancer his dancing,than the miser hi s moneybags,than the popularity-hunter his little applause.And these,when they are exceptionally in earnest,are ready to forgo food and slee p,so that they forward the things in which they are interested.But dos t thou deem the acts of a social being of less worth and less deserving of attention?
2.How easy a thing it is to put away and blot out every impression t hat is disturbing or alien,and to be at once in perfect peace.
3.Deem no word or deed that is in accord with Nature to be unworthy of thee,and be not plucked aside by the consequent censure of others or what they say,but if a thing is good to do or say,judge not thyself un worthy of it.For those others have their own ruling Reason and follow t heir own bent.Do not thou turn thine eyes aside,but keep to the straig ht path,following thy own and the universal Nature;and the path of the se twain is one.
4.I fare forth through all that Nature wills until the day when I sh all sink down and rest from my labours,breathing forth my last breath i nto the air whence I daily draw it in,and falling upon that earth,when ce also my father gathered the seed,and my mother the blood,and my nur se the milk;whence daily for so many years I am fed and watered;which bears me as I tread it under foot and make full use of it in a thousand ways.
5.Sharpness of wit men cannot praise thee for.Granted!Yet there ar e many other qualities of which thou canst not say:I had not that by Na ture.Well then,display those which are wholly in thy power,sterling si ncerity,dignity,endurance of toil,abstinence from pleasure.Grumble n ot at thy lot,be content with little,be kindly,independent,frugal,s erious,high-minded.Seest thou not how many virtues it is in thy power t o display now,in respect of which thou canst plead no natural in capaci ty or incompatibility,and yet thou art content still with a lower stand ard?Or art thou forced to be discontented,to be grasping,to flatter,to inveigh against the body,to play the toady and the braggart,and to be so unstable in thy soul,because forsooth thou hast no natural gifts?By the Gods,No!but long ere now couldest thou have shaken thyself fre e from all this and have lain under the imputation only,if it must be s o,of being somewhat slow and dull of apprehension.And this too thou mu st amend with training and not ignore thy dulness or be in love with it.
6.One man,when he has done another a kindness,is ready also to rec kon on a return.A second is not ready to do this,but yet in his heart of hearts ranks the other as a debtor,and he is conscious of what he ha s done.But a third is in a manner not conscious of it,but is like the vine that has borne a cluster of grapes,and when it has once borne its due fruit looks for no reward beyond,as it is with a steed when it has run its course,a hound when it has singled out the trail,a bee when sh e hath made her comb.And so a man when he hath done one thing well,doe s not cry it abroad,but betakes himself to a second,as a vine to bear afresh her clusters in due season.
A man then must be of those who act thus as it were unconsciously?A ye.But surely he must be conscious of what he is doing,for it is,we a re told,the peculiar attribute of the man of true social instincts to b e aware that he puts such instincts into practice,and by heaven to wish that his fellow should be aware of it too.True;but thou misconceivest the present argument,and wilt consequently be of the number of those wh om I mentioned before;for in fact they are led astray by reasoning whic h has a plausible look.But if thou thinkest it worth while to understan d what has been said,fear not that thou wilt be led thereby to neglect any social act.
7.A prayer of the Athenians:Rain,Rain,O dear Zeus,upon the cornland of the Athenians and their meads.Either pray not at all,or in thi s simple and frank fashion.
8.We have all heard,Aesculapius has prescribed for so and so riding exercise,or cold baths,or walking bare-foot.Precisely so it may be sa id that the Universal Nature has prescribed for so and so sickness or ma im or loss or what not of the same kind.For,in the former case,prescr ibed has some such meaning as this:He ordained this for so and so as co nducive to his health;while in the latter what befalls each man has bee n ordained in some way as conducive to his destiny.For we say that thin gs fall to us,as the masons too say that the huge squared stones in wal ls and pyramids fall into their places,adjusting themselves harmoniousl y to one another in a sort of structural unity.For,in fine,there is o ne harmony of all things,and just as from all bodies the Universe is ma de up into such a body as it is,so from all causes is Destiny made up i nto such a Cause.This is recognized by the most unthinking,for they sa y:Fate brought this on him.So then this was brought on this man,and t his prescribed for this man.Let us then accept our fate,as we accept t he prescriptions of Aesculapius.And in fact in these,too,there are ma ny"bitter pills,"but we welcome them in hope of health.
Take much the same view of the accomplishment and consummation of wh at Nature approves as of thy health,and so welcome whatever happens,sh ould it even be somewhat distasteful,because it contributes to the heal th of the Universe and the well-faring and well-doing of Zeus himself.F or he had not brought this on a man,unless it had brought welfare to th e Whole.For take any nature thou wilt,it never brings upon that which is under its control anything that does not conduce to its interests.
For two reasons then it behoves thee to acquiesce in what befalls:o ne,that it was for thee it took place,and was prescribed for thee,and had reference in some sort to thee,being a thread of destiny spun from the first for thee from the most ancient causes;the other,that even wh at befalls each individual is the cause of the well-faring,of the consu mmation and by heaven of the very permanence of that which controls the Universe.For the perfection of the Whole is impaired,if thou cuttest o ff ever so little of the coherence and continuance of the Causes no less than of the parts.And thou dost cut them off,as far as lies with thee,and bring them to an end,when thou murmurest.
9.Do not feel qualms or despondency or discomfiture if thou dost not invariably succeed in acting from right principles;but when thou art fo iled,come back again to them,and rejoice if on the whole thy conduct i s worthy of a man,and love the course to which thou returnest.Come not back to Philosophy as to a schoolmaster,but as the sore-eyed to their s ponges and their white of egg,as this patient to his plaster and that t o his fomentations.Thus wilt thou rest satisfied with Reason,yet make n o parade of obeying her.And forget not that Philosophy wishes but what thy nature wishes,whereas thy wish was for something else that accords not with Nature.Yes,for it would have been the acme of delight.Ah,is not that the very reason why pleasure trips us up?Nay,see if these be not more delightful still:high-mindedness,independence,simplicity,te nderness of heart,sanctity of life.Why what is more delightful than wi sdom herself,when thou thinkest how sure and smooth in all its workings is the faculty of understanding and knowledge?
10.Things are in a sense so wrapped up in mystery that not a few phi losophers,and they no ordinary ones,have concluded that they are wholl y beyond our comprehension:nay,even the Stoics themselves find them ha rd to comprehend.Indeed every assent we give to the impressions of our senses is liable to error,for where is the man who never errs?Pass on then to the objective things themselves,how transitory they are,how wo rthless,the property,quite possibly,of a boy-minion,a harlot,or a b rigand.After that turn to the characters of thine associates,even the most refined of whom it is difficult to put up with,let alone the fact that a man has enough to do to endure himself.
What then there can be amid such murk and nastiness,and in so cease less an ebbing of substance and of time,of movement and things moved,t hat deserves to be greatly valued or to excite our ambition in the least,I cannot even conceive.On the contrary,a man should take heart of gr ace to await his natural dissolution,and without any chafing at delay c omfort himself with these twin thoughts alone:the one,that nothing wil l befall me that is not in accord with the Nature of the Universe;the o ther,that it is in my power to do nothing contrary to the God and the"genius"within me.For no one can force me to disobey that.
11.To what use then am I putting my soul?Never fail to ask thyself this question and to cross-examine thyself thus:What relation have I to this part of me which they call the ruling Reason?And whose Soul have I got now?The Soul of a child?Of a youth?Of a woman?Of a tyrant?Of a d omestic animal?Of a wild beast?
12.What are counted as good things in the estimation of the many tho u canst gather even from this.For if a man fix his mind upon certain th ings as really and unquestionably good,such as wisdom,temperance,just ice,manliness,with this preconception in his mind he could no longer b ear to listen to the poet's,By reason of his wealth of goods;for it w ould not apply.But,if a man first fix his mind upon the things which a ppear good to the multitude,he will listen and readily accept as aptly added the quotation from the Comic Poet.In this way even the multitude have a perception of the difference.For otherwise this jest would not o ffend and be repudiated,while we accept it as appropriately and wittily said of wealth and of the advantages which wait upon luxury and populari ty.Go on,then,and ask whether we should prize and count as good those things,with which first fixed in our mind we might germanely quote of t heir possessor,that for his very wealth of goods he has no place to eas e himself in.
13.I am made up of the Causal and the Material,and neither of these disappears into nothing,just as neither did it come into existence out of nothing.So shall my every part by change be told off to form some pa rt of the Universe,and that again be changed into another part of it,a nd so on to infinity.It was by such process of change that I too came i nto being and my parents,and so backwards into a second infinity.And t he statement is quite legitimate,even if the Universe be arranged accor ding to completed cycles.
14.Reason and the art of reasoning are in themselves and in their ow n proper acts self-sufficing faculties.Starting from a principle peculi ar to them,they journey on to the end set before them.Wherefore such a ctions are termed right acts,as signifying that they follow the right w ay.
15.Call none of those things a man's that do not fall to him as man.They cannot be claimed of a man;the man's nature does not guarantee them;they are no consummations of that nature.Consequently neither is the end for which man lives placed in these things,nor yet that which i s perfective of the end,namely The Good.Moreover,if any of these thin gs did fall to a man,it would not fall to him to contemn them and set h is face against them,nor would a man be commendable who shewed himself independent of these things,nor yet would he be a good man who came sho rt of his own standard in any of them,if so be these things were good.But as it is,the more a man can cut himself free,or even be set free,from these and other such things with equanimity,by so much the more is he good.
16.The character of thy mind will be such as is the character of thy frequent thoughts,for the soul takes its dye from the thoughts.Dye her then with a continuous succession of such thoughts as these:Where life is possible,there it is possible also to live well.-But the life is li fe in a Court.Well,in a Court too it is possible to live well.And aga in:A thing is drawn towards that for the sake of which it has been made,and its end lies in that towards which it is drawn and,where its end lies,there lie also its interest and its good.The Good,then,for a ra tional creature is fellowship with others.For it has been made clear lo ng ago that we were constituted for fellowship.Or was it not obvious th at the lower were for the sake of the higher and the higher for the sake of one another?And living things are higher than lifeless,and those th at have reason than those that have life only.
17.To crave impossibilities is lunacy;but it is impossible for the wicked to act otherwise.
18.Nothing befalls anyone that he is not fitted by nature to bear.O thers experience the same things as thou,but either from ignorance that anything has befallen them,or to manifest their greatness of mind,they stand firm and get no hurt.A strange thing indeed that ignorance and va nity should prove stronger than wisdom!
19.Things of themselves cannot take the least hold of the Soul,nor have any access to her,nor deflect or move her;but the Soul alone defl ects and moves herself,and whatever judgments she deems it right to for m,in conformity with them she fashions for herself the things that subm it themselves to her from without.
20.In one respect a man is of very close concern to us,in so far as we must do him good and forbear;but in so far as any stand in the way o f those acts which concern us closely,then man becomes for me as much o ne of things indifferent as the sun,as the wind,as a wild-beast.Thoug h a man may in some sort fetter my activity,yet on my own initiative an d mental attitude no fetters can be put because of the power they posses s of conditional action and of adaptation to circumstances.For everythi ng that stands in the way of its activity is adapted and transmuted by t he mind into a furtherance of it,and that which is a check on this acti on is converted into a help to it,and that which is a hindrance in our path goes but to make it easier.
21.Prize the most excellent thing in the Universe;and this is that which utilizes all things and controls all things.Prize in like manner the most excellent thing in thyself;and this is that which is akin to t he other.For this,which utilizes all else is in thee too,and by it th y life is governed.
22.That which is not hurtful to the community cannot hurt the indivi dual.Test every case of apparent hurt by this rule:if the community be not hurt by this,neither am I hurt;but if the community be hurt,there is no need to be angry with him that hath done the hurt,but to enquire,what hath he seen amiss?
23.Think often on the swiftness with which the things that exist and that are coming into existence are swept past us and carried out of sigh t.For all substance is as a river in ceaseless flow,its activities eve r changing and its causes subject to countless variations,and scarcely anything stable;and ever beside us is this infinity of the past and yaw ning abyss of the future,wherein all things are disappearing.Is he not senseless who in such an environment puffs himself up,or is distracted,or frets as over a trouble lasting and far-reaching?
24.Keep in memory the universal Substance,of which thou art a tiny part;and universal Time,of which a brief,nay an almost momentary span has been allotted thee;and Destiny,in which how fractional thy share?
25.Another does me some wrong?He shall see to it.His disposition i s his own,his activities are his own.What the universal Nature wills m e to have now,that I now have,and what my nature wills me now to do,t hat I do.
26.Let the ruling and master Reason of thy soul be proof against any motions in the flesh smooth or rough.Let it not mingle itself with them,but isolate and restrict those tendencies to their true spheres.But w hen in virtue of that other sympathetic connection these tendencies grow up into the mind as is to be expected in a single organism,then must th ou not go about to resist the sensation,natural as it is,but see that thy ruling Reason adds no opinion of its own as to whether such is good or bad.
27.Walk with the Gods!And he does walk with the Gods,who lets them see his soul invariably satisfied with its lot and carrying out the will of that"genius",a particle of himself,which Zeus has given to every man as his captain and guide-and this is none other than each man's in telligence and reason.
28.If a man's armpits are unpleasant,art thou angry with him?If h e has foul breath?What would be the use?The man has such a mouth,he h as such armpits.Some such effluvium was bound to come from such a sourc e.But the man has sense,quotha!With a little attention he could see wherein he offends.I congratulate thee!Well,thou too hast sense.By a rational attitude,then,in thyself evoke a rational attitude in him,enlighten him,admonish him.If he listens,thou shalt cure him,and hav e no need of anger.
29.Thou canst live on earth as thou dost purpose to live when depart ed.But if men will not have it so,then is it time for thee even to go out of life,yet not as one who is treated ill.'Tis smoky and I go awa y.Why think it a great matter?But while no such cause drives me forth,I remain a free man,and none shall prevent me from doing what I will,a nd I will what is in accordance with the nature of a rational and social creature.
30.The intelligence of the Universe is social.It hath at any rate m ade the lower things for the sake of the higher,and it adapted the high er to one another.Thou seest how it hath subordinated,coordinated,and given each its due lot and brought the move excellent things into mutual accord.
31.How hast thou borne thyself heretofore towards Gods,parents,bro thers,wife,children,teachers,tutors,friends,relations,household?Canst thou say truly of them all to this day,doing to no man wrong,nor speaking aught that is evil?And call to mind all that thou hast passed through,all thou hast found strength to bear;that the story of thy lif e is now full-told and thy service is ending;and how many beautiful sig hts thou hast seen,how many pleasures and pains thou hast disregarded,forgone what ambitions,and repaid with kindness how much unkindness.
32.Why do unskilled and ignorant souls confound him who has skill an d has knowledge?What soul,then,has skill and knowledge?Even that whi ch knoweth beginning and end,and the reason that informs all Substance,and governs the Whole from ordered cycle to cycle through all eternity.
33.But a little while and thou shalt be burnt ashes or a few dry bon es,and possibly a name,possibly not a name even.And a name is but sou nd and a far off echo.And all that we prize so highly in our lives is e mpty and rotten and paltry,and we but as puppies snapping at each other,as quarrelsome children now laughing and anon in tears.But faith and modesty and justice and truth up from the wide-wayed Earth have winged t heir flight to Olympus.What then keeps thee here?-If indeed sensible o bjects are ever changing and unstable,and our faculties are so feeble a nd so easily misled;and the poor soul itself is an exhalation from bloo d;and to be well-thought of in such a world mere vanity.What then rema ins?To wait with a good grace for the end,whether it be extinction or translation.But till our time for that be come,what sufficeth?What bu t to reverence the Gods and to praise them,to do good unto men and to b ear with them and forbear,but,for all else that comes within the compa ss of this poor flesh and breath,to remember that it is not thine nor u nder thy control?
34.Thou hast it in thy power that the current of thy life be ever fa ir,if also 'tis thine to make fair way,if also in ordered way to thin k and act.The Soul of God and the souls of men and of every rational cr eature have these two characteristics in common:to suffer no let or hin drance from another,and to find their good in a condition and practice of justice,and to confine their propension to this.
35.If this be no vice of mine nor the outcome of any vice of mine,a nd if the common interest does not suffer,why concern myself about it?And how can the common interest suffer?
36.Be not carried incontinently away by sense-impressions,but rally to the fight as thou canst and as is due.If there be failure in things indifferent,think not there is any great harm done;for that is an evil habit.But as the greybeard (in the play) taking his leave reclaimed his foster-child's top,not forgetting that it was but a top,so do thou he re also.Since indeed thou art found haranguing on the hustings,O Man,hast thou forgotten what this really means?Aye,but people will have it.Must thou too be a fool in consequence?
Time was that wheresoever forsaken I was a man well-portioned;but t hat man well-portioned is he that hath given himself a good portion;and good portions are good phases of the soul,good impulses,good actions.